The New American Dynasty

A matchless media pedigree and surprising commitment to vulnerability have made Jada Pinkett-Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris a veritable viral phenomenon with their mega-hit, Red Table Talk. Here, mother, daughter, and "Gam" open up about the power of intergenerational conversation.

By
Niela Orr and Photographed by Mariano Vivanco; Styled by Simon Robins

Jada Pinkett-Smith is determined to help women own their power. If she can do that, she reasons, she can create a better world. “Whether it's empowering people to have the lives they want, or empowering people to protect the environment, we’re ensuring people have a voice.”

That “we” she’s referring to is her family; namely, her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris. Together, they make up the trio behind Red Table Talk, the mega-hit Facebook Watch talk show that found immediate success as a space for intergenerational discourse, where grandmother, mother, and daughter dish unselfconsciously about everything from love and sex, to mental health and drug abuse.

But today, three days before the midterm elections, there is one topic that’s off limits. “We're not going to talk about that right now,” Jada asserts, her now-famous mixture of good-girlfriend directness and guru-like wisdom dissolving into pure maternal instinct after I ask Willow, who celebrated her 18th birthday a few days earlier, if she’ll be voting. The headstrong teenager—who will later tell me how she recently survived three days lost in the woods with no water—attempts an answer anyway, choosing instead to speak to another, more internal way she’d like to be politically active. “Obviously we're in a patriarchal society that looks down on vulnerability and looks down on emotion and looks down on femininity,” she notes, passionately. “The biggest rebellion is coming into your vulnerability and seeing that as a power. Once you get in touch with your emotions, you start to understand things in a whole other way. When you express what you feel needs to change, or what you feel is unfair or wrong, that's so important, but the real agent of change is when you embody the truth.”

Wrapped in plush white robes as they devour lunch outside their BAZAAR.com cover shoot in Los Angeles, the three women are in the exact same formation you’ll find on Red Table Talk: Jada in the middle (eating chicken and veggies), Willow to her left (sipping a green juice and a nibbling on a raw vegetable tray), and Adrienne on her right (with a cup of tea). It's Willow's insistence on viewing emotional vulnerability as an asset, rather than a liability, that resonates so deeply with Red Table Talk viewers. Since the first episode aired in May, it's garnered more than 29 million views on Facebook—a tally which doesn’t even include the views it's since racked up in aggregations elsewhere online. The series has become a veritable viral phenomenon, with its first 10-episode season being extended by an additional 13 episodes airing this winter.

An update on the classic talk show, Red Table (as it’s known to fans) tackles uncomfortable subjects—even for a modern audience surrounded by seemingly constant raw and unfiltered moments. In an upcoming episode, airing December 13, Jada and her younger brother Caleeb open up about the domestic abuse their mother faced at the hands of their father. “And eventually, we will be having a show about colorism within the African-American community...we're going to have to go there,” Jada mentions, adding to the list of prickly topics the show will cover in its next season. Though she was reticent to talk about voting, our conversation ends up being suffused with politics, and she pauses for a moment to clarify. “I just want you to know why we've pushed back on politics. It’s because we take a lot of pride at the Red Table where we really try to deal with issues of the heart and issues of self-awareness and development. We really focus more on what's going on internally versus externally.”

One of Red Table’s executive producers, longtime Oprah Winfrey Show vet and multiple-Emmy-winner, Ellen Rakieten, buttresses Jada’s statement. “We didn't sit down and say, ‘We're not doing politics.’ That never was a discussion. But getting in a political debate doesn't seem to service. It's not what we are here to do.” Rakieten’s instinct, honed from 23 years working with Oprah, extends beyond the vision and ambition of the talk show itself—there was also her gut feeling on Jada’s potential to follow in her former boss’s footsteps. “Since my time with Oprah, many, many people have come to me saying, ‘I want to be the next Oprah.’ Well, that's not going to happen,” says Rakieten, who admits she’d “never felt it” with anyone else. “When I left my first interaction with Jada, I was like, ‘Oh, oh.’ I had that feeling.”

Part of the show’s charm, notes Rakieten, is that instead of a bunch of unfamiliar women cast and screen-tested together, Red Table invites viewers into the home of the notoriously private Smiths—and into their most intimate dialogues, of which internal reflection is a cornerstone. “It's more like an extension of our conversations when we're alone and just how we are with each other naturally,” says Willow. Add to that the show’s unexpected one-on-one pairings (Sheree Fletcher, Will’s ex-wife, was a guest on the first episode; and a previous interview featured former Scientologist Leah Remini, who Jada had a public falling out with over claims that the Smiths were secret Scientologists), and it’s easy to see why the show has reverberated across the internet. Red Table Talk, whose viewers are 64 percent women, according to Facebook, has inspired other unofficial discussion groups. One of the largest, Red Table TalkRVA, boasts 35,000 members. “I remember when our first episode with Sheree ‘dropped’ as they say,” recalls Rakiteten, “I said to Jada, ‘Oh my gosh, I feel like we're doing a combination of running QVC and a network because we're just watching these numbers—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then immediate reaction.'”

The show’s impact seems to stem from the answer to a simple question, one that amounts to something of an unofficial tagline of the show: “Why don't we, as women especially, have more honest conversations—just about life?” Jada asks. “The females I've reached out to in my experience really made me feel like Red Table Talk was an important place to have honest and real conversation, because we're all going through so much. I don't know why that's wrong [to talk about things]. Well, I do know why, because we are a culture that's about privacy and…” Willow jumps in: “and trying to make it seem like it's something that it's not.”

“I think we spend more time trying to keep up an image,” Jada adds. “Appearances,” replies Willow, in what is beginning to feel like intimate verbal volleyball between mother and daughter. “Appearances, really, than living truth. But, I think that's changing,” Jada contends. “I think people are really tired of that, and see that's not working. It's not worth it. It costs too much. That, for me, is what also inspires me to share my experiences, because women who've had the courage to share their experiences with me could change my life in the biggest way, you know?”

Indeed, Red Table Talk was borne from conversations between Jada and Pauletta Washington (married to Denzel) at the Smith family’s own dusty red table seven years ago. “I had a nervous breakdown,” Jada recalls, the memory of that moment barely registering on her peaceful expression—though the stress of the ordeal seeps into her voice. “I mean, not a nervous breakdown ... what do you call it? A freaking mid-life crisis. I turned 40—when you look at your life and everything that was true is now not, and everything that was seemingly untrue now is true.” That crisis, which Jada has talked about on Red Table Talk, has catalyzed a cathartic space for viewers to share their own stories. Many use the show’s Facebook page to leave uplifting accounts of how the three women have changed their lives. “I tell people, ‘It's not us. You're ecstatic because we're just helping you reach what you are. That's what you're happy about,’” Jada notes. “That's what we're supposed to do for each other—to see each other's life.”

It's not uncommon for the trio to surprise even each other with the major life revelations made on the show. “There's just so many stories, so sometimes you're going to miss a few,” reveals Adrienne, who learned for the first time, during episode 11, that Will was introduced to his first wife Sheree en route to the set of A Different World, where he was supposed to meet Jada. On that same episode, Jada and Will, who have been married for 21 years, debunked rumors that have long-surrounded the couple: “We’ve never been Scientologists...we’ve never been swingers,” Will said. Adrienne and Jada deny that the show is intended to be a way to counteract tabloid fodder, even if it’s a byproduct of having the platform. As Jada explains, “Listen, there's people out here trying to figure out how to keep their kids safe, how to feed their families. Man, let me tell you ... if I gotta deal with gossip, I am grateful for that problem. Trust and believe that specifically I have much more crucial problems living in Baltimore City... you want gossip, to talk shit about me? I'll take it!”

Back on set, dressed in a yellow Oscar de la Renta gown, Jada has a question for the photographer, Mariano Vivanco, and his crew: “You ready for us?” In the ebullient tone television and film audiences are familiar with, that confident A-list-by-way-of-Baltimore-brogue that seems like it can’t possibly emanate from her petite five-foot frame, she turns on a dime and exclaims, “Ladies, let’s do this one more time!” Jada, Willow, and Adrienne, a true triple threat, have been at their BAZAAR.com shoot for hours, and once it’s clear they’re needed again, Adrienne pulls herself away from the dress she’s examining, and Willow sways from the vanity desk where hairstylists and dressers make last-minute adjustments to her look. The three women chuckle and glide in a single line to where their photographer waits. Poised and serving all kinds of face, they look like each other’s future, present, and past, a continuum of beauty that at any gradient is on point. To paraphrase the motto of Jada's Girls Trip co-star Tiffany Haddish, they ready.

Everyone stands back to behold the three regal beauties, who don’t need crowns to validate their majesty, but will have them on soon enough in a later set of pictures to emphasize the point for those who don’t know. They resemble what you might see if you type “#familygoals” into Instagram’s search bar. They appear as toned and fit as the members of Black Panther’s all-woman army, the Dora Milaje; a futuristic femme squad out of Jay Z’s “Family Feud” video or The Matrix Reloaded (which Jada starred in); and as refined as honorees at a Boulé soiree posing for a keepsake print.

But there’s something about their easy intimacy and soft, earnest dynamic that transcends this moment. Given Jada’s attention to Adrienne’s bare clavicle (“Why don’t you wear something around your neck?”) the photo shoot feels like more than just a professional obligation. The care they demonstrate with each other makes it less like a gig and more like an occasion for a mother, daughter, and granddaughter to play dress-up before going out. For Jada, who has graced many magazine covers, and Willow, who has been styled and profiled both as a Smith daughter and as a solo musician, this might just be another day at work, if not a glamorous one. But for Adrienne, called “Gammy,” or “Gam” by her offspring, this is her first time. No wonder there is so much tulle on the stylist’s racks; this is a coming out party. “They're not used to me in this world, so it's been an adjustment for my family,” Adrienne admits. “There's still that group that kind of looks at you like, ‘Oh, that's Jada's mom!’—I've been going through that for years, so it's all good.”

For Adrienne, who worked as a nurse in Baltimore for decades and specialized in women’s health, her role on Red Table Talk is another way for her to affect women’s wellbeing. Her daughter and granddaughter beam with joy at her role on the photoshoot—and the new-found attention of Red Table Talk viewers. “It's not so much her being in the spotlight, but just like, she's 65 ... she's taking on a whole new career,” explains Jada. “As a woman, it's such an amazing story, because women feel like as they get older their lives are over. It's not. It's never over. I don't care how old you think you're getting. My mother is 65 and her first freaking photoshoot is freaking Harper's Bazaar!” Willow brightens and remarks, “I just am so happy! ‘Go Gam!’ She's just giving it. I just love seeing her explore that side of herself.” She turns to her grandmother for a finishing praise, “ you're so beautiful. It's inspiring to see you really shine."

In addition to marking a career change for Adrienne, the show also provides a different creative outlet for Jada, who, after acting for more than 30 years portraying other people’s lives, is creating opportunities for herself that Hollywood doesn’t usually afford women her age. In addition to hosting Red Table, Jada has also taken to writing, interviewing the musician SZA earlier this year. And last year, she starred in Girls Trip, the first black-led movie to exceed $100 million at the box office. “I'm in my late 40's. This is the time that they send you out to pasture,” she says. "Don't let people tell you that you're too old. That it's over, 'cause that's a lie."

Most of the Smith clan is represented at this photo shoot: bottles of Jaden Smith’s Just Water are within arm's reach in the studio, and blaring over the sound system are the guitar licks of Sister Sledge’s “He’s the Greatest Dancer,” the main sample of Will Smith’s “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It.” We chat about Will's oldest son Trey and his DJing, and Jaden’s dual role as an environmental activist and his mom’s social media advisor. (“He said, ‘Mommy, post all the cat pictures you want.’ I'm like, ‘Jaden, they're going to take me off Instagram again,’” Jada laughs.) The conversation shifts to Willow’s music, which she’s been creating since she was 10, and its through-line of what she calls emotions and feelings. “I've had males come up to me and say, ‘Female energy ... that really hit me. Obviously, it's a very feminine energy that comes through my music, but I want it to be all-inclusive. I want men to feel welcome to come to that side as well,” the "Whip My Hair” singer explains. Jada is particularly animated, her expression softening, when she thinks about what’s ahead for her daughter. “I'm really excited to see what Willow will do with her life, because she's 18 and she's so talented in so many different areas. She told me the other day, ‘Mom, I might just be a checkout person at Whole Foods.’ I said, ‘You know what Willow, that'd be alright with me as long you're happy. I really couldn’t care less. You could freaking disappear and get off the grid—as long as you're happy.’”

Aside from Willow’s future, Adrienne’s sobriety—which she divulged on a previous episode of Red Table Talk—is a space where the trio’s talk-show patter drops, and the two elder women become briefly unguarded. “People come up and just thank me,” Adrienne explains. “[They] say, ‘I'm trying. I'm working on it,’ that kind of stuff. I just try to encourage them.” She admits she was hesitant to publicize such a personal battle, but she did so, she says, to try and demystify the struggle of addiction. “I felt like the impact that I could have to change the stigma of addiction and the help that I could offer was more important.” For Jada, the reaction to her mother’s story is both a moment of pride and a sign of hope. “She had a heroin addiction for so long... It's not no itty bitty thing, you know? She's not what people would consider [an addict to look like]... It's like, yeah, so let's be clear, it's not one kind of person that is an addict.”

On issues of injustice, the women are especially spirited. “The more that you're aware of the intricacies of oppression, then you can start unwinding it,” says Willow. “All of the young people who are influencing change are people who are pushing back against that.” Adrienne, for her part, sees how injustice has defined America's opioid crisis. “It's always been there. It's just that it's [now] hitting a certain group of people.” This, says Jada, is something they feel strongly about. "There's been people dying where we're from for as long as we can remember. That crisis has been popping for a long time,” she pauses. “I'm glad that it's come to the surface. I'm just trying to learn how not to take things personally and know that everything is in its divine order. That's what I've been working on lately—once you give everything to that divine understanding, you can let all the other personal stuff go. I guess for me, it's really personal because of the experiences that I've had with my mother and a lot of people in my life, so it's been something we've been living with for a long time.”

As far as her own story, Adrienne has refocused her energies into fitness. “This is not new. This isn't something that I just started,” she says of the viral photo she took with Willow and Jada, which shows all three exercising together, ripped and ready to take on the world. “Working out almost became my new obsession after my addiction. It kind of replaced one with the other.” For Willow, working out with her foremothers is a bonding experience: “I love going to the gym with you guys. It's so fun; we always go so hard.” “And challenge each other,” Adrienne replies. “I have a trainer back in Maryland where I live, but when I come out here, Jada is the trainer.”

The three women smile and Jada, with the mysteries of maternity on her mind, remarks to her girl, “What's interesting is that you know that Gammy carried you as well.” For a second, I wonder if she’s just dropped the bomb of all bombs (was Adrienne Willow’s surrogate mother?), but then the meaning becomes clearer. Jada turns to address Adrienne: “Because when I was in your womb my ovaries are being created, and they're the only ovaries we have for a lifetime. So, we're actually carrying both of us.” Willow brightens, her septum piercing sparkling in the sunlight, and nods before trilling her review of this news. “Crazy! That's trippy! We were all inside of each other at a certain point,” she says, shaking her head.

The youngest woman at the table continues to search for the precise term for this physiological interplay, and then finds it: Russian nesting dolls. The matryoshka doll is an interesting metaphor for the Smith women’s relationship to each other. Nesting dolls protect each other, keep treasures safe, and even when apart, retain space for each other within themselves. In these women, that protectiveness and overlapping sensibility is truly evident. You see a bit of Adrienne’s professional, maternal care in Jada, and Jada’s edge—circa her time helming metal band Wicked Wisdom—in Willow’s music, especially her most recent album, 2015’s Ardipithecus. On the other hand, Adrienne, who remarried three years ago, often gets marital advice from Jada and Will (“They have really good counsel”). Moreover, their intertwining lives culminate to a greater understanding of life itself—best summed by Jada when it’s especially quiet outside, as the din of traffic underscores the stillness and silence at the table: “Sometimes people feel like they get into a hole so deep, they can't get out, and that's just my truth. It's just mine. And, she's living testimony to that. Gammy, you just keep building. I swear to God, I just think about her life from having a baby at 18, married at 18 ... Willow's age ... look at Willow. My mother had me at her age and a crazy ass husband. Then, from that ... that's a hell of a journey, but that's life.”

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